Technological advances have made more options available for surgical intervention in spinal disorders. From spinal fusion to artificial disc implantation, these advancements have brought great benefits, allowing preservation of spinal motion and flexibility after intervertebral discectomy. Yet the use of artificial discs as a treatment for congenital spinal disorders has been documented in only...

This paper provides evidence that limb-deficient subjects who wear artificial arms tend to overestimate the perceived length of their residual limb. It is proposed that this "perceptual error" may provide a useful and possibly more valid alternative to existing methods of determining prosthetic acceptance. The degree of overestimation is substantial for most subjects with amputations, and typic...

In the rubber-hand illusion (RHI), people attribute an artificial object to their own body. In the present study, we investigate the extent to which RHI is affected by visual discrepancies between the artificial object and a human hand. We tested Armel and Ramachandran's (2003) hypothesis that people will experience a stronger RHI when the artificial object is a skin-like textured sheet instead...

Visual prosthesis simulators aim to provide a means of demonstrating, evaluating and improving the results of artificial vision devices. They transform the normal view of a camera scene into a form that represents the visual perceptions that would be caused by applying electrical stimulation to a part of the human visual pathway. These perceptions are called phosphenes and, in a cortical visual...

In surgical knee replacement, the damaged knee joint is replaced with artificial prostheses. An accurate clinical evaluation must be carried out before applying knee prostheses to ensure optimal outcome from surgical operations and to reduce the probability of having long-term problems. Useful information can be inferred from CT scans of the knee area, that can be used to estimate the stress th...

Post-traumatic aniridia combined with aphakia may be seen after globe injury. Aside from esthetic aspects, partial or total loss of the iris tissue may also be related to various degrees of glare and photophobia. Such patients suffer from severe visual impairment secondary to aphakia. Herein we describe a novel surgical technique for the management of an aphakic eye with traumatic aniridia for ...

The research of humanoid robot and intelligent prosthesis is integrated and a new-style humanoid robot named biped robot with heterogeneous legs (BRHL) is proposed to provide an ideal test-bed for intelligent bionic leg (IBL). The research background and concept of BRHL are introduced. The existed problems of common humanoid robot leg are analysed in detail. Based on bionics, the joint structur...